time for some roastin'
And so we have it: two true profiles of actual people in my office. There are more, but my lunch hours are only so long. More to come, I promise.
The perpetually PMSing co-worker
Her moods normally range to irritable to (pseudo)-homicidal rage and it seems that she has about the sensitivity of a piece of litmus paper dipped in acid. Most of the time I’m simply intimidated by her. On a few occasions however, when she’s flown into a fit of torrential anger, I’ve fought the urge to dive under my desk, hug my computer tower, and cry for my mommy. Instead, while she slams her desk drawers shut with formidable force, pounds on her keyboard until I feel start feeling sorry for it, and smashes binders and files onto the table, my knees knock the bottom of my keyboard tray as I jump a bit and I wind up making tons of typing errors as a result of my heart seizing in fear with every impact coming from the other side of the divider. Granted, her boss gives her a lot of crap, but for goodness’ sake, lady, get a grip.
I’ve had the unfortunate experience of having to encounter her while she’s been in one of her fouler moods. I remember timidly approaching her desk one day, while she was typing something and asking for some documents that I needed.
“Um…hi.” I cleared my throat awkwardly while she continued to type without so much as glancing at me. “I was wondering if you could maybe pass me that stress report…” She finally looked up at me and gave me such a penetrating stare that I involuntarily backed away. “Y-you know…” I sputtered helplessly as she glared at me wordlessly, “th-the one the cu-customer sent to…uh… you…” My voice, already feeble to begin with, trailed off into a whisper.
It’s not like she wasn’t completely co-operative. To be completely fair, she has her good days scattered here and there. Sort of like rainy days in Las Vegas.
Give this guy an inch and he’ll stretch to ten thousand miles
This is the guy who can’t help but flirt with every woman in sight, whether it’s a married mother of two in her late-forties or a fresh-out-of university grad 12 years his junior (yes, that would be me). He’s about a hundred trillion light years away from emanating anything resembling suaveness, and his bumbling of the English language coupled with his thick accent doesn’t help matters along. “Ah, womans” he said snarkily in my hearing once after I mumbled an obligatory “good morning” to him. It made want to spin around, grab him by the collar, shake him hard and say: “It’s wo-men! WO-MEN!! How could you possibly not get that after being in North America for 15 years?!”
If I sound unusually biting in my description of him, it’s because I’ve had a couple of bad run-ins with the guy. He was exceedingly nice to me when I started working here last year, and being the naïve gal that I was, I took it as him simply being welcoming and friendly to a new employee. I mean, who would have thought that a divorced 34 year old with two children would be interested in someone almost 12 years younger?
Unfortunately as the months progressed it became increasingly clear to me that he was not the “older brother” figure I had made him out to be, as he started to ask me out for coffee on the weekends or dinner after work. A little bit taken aback the very first time he asked, I had given him the benefit of the doubt that he simply wanted to socialize outside the office, but feeling uncomfortable with the idea, I politely declined and gave some sort of lame excuse about feeling tired.
Now girls, some guys will take that as a hint and leave you alone. Someone who can’t master the word “women” will not.
I stopped having lunch with him so frequently and soon he was muttering “Oh, fine, so go have lunch with him, and not me” each time I was in his vicinity. Then there were the jokingly half-serious marriage proposals, the gifts he left on my desk and the whining “How come you don’t come and say hi to me anymore?” So I just began avoiding him altogether, which brought on yet another barrage of unwanted encounters.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked me one day, after many months of my avoiding him. Out of completely necessity I had to ask him a question that was work-related.
“No,” I answered plainly. “I’m not mad at you. I just want to maintain a certain degree of professionalism.” I kid you not, those are the exact words I said to him. Looking slightly taken aback initially, he then proceeded to be sullen and somber for the duration of our conversation.
So you would think that would be the end of it all. Sadly, it was not – he cornered me at least a half-dozen more times to say to me “Did I do something wrong? How come you don’t talk to me anymore? I’m sorry I made you mad. I’m so sorry. Don’t be mad”
Finally one day, I lost it. “Listen!” I interrupted him mid-sentence after he had stopped at my desk yet again again to offer another bumbling apology for nothing. “I’m not mad at you! So stop asking because you’re FREAKING me out!”
And that was the end of that. He sulked around the office for a week, told the Maryse the receptionist that he thought he was in love with me, and that he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t be interested in him. Of course, he promptly started hitting on the next female employee that was hired. Yech.
